Musings of a Patriot

Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • Climbing the Mountain

    A week ago Scott posted a 1500 word analysis of the mountain I have invited others to climb with me. As usual, he provided many useful insights that should help us to navigate this climb successfully. After having a week to begin to digest his analysis I am finally ready to begin to address some…

  • Ask the Candidates (and Share Their Answers)

    In an effort to not lose all inertia, I am publicly inviting anyone who has any interest in Anything But Neutral to choose a political race in Utah and ask the candidates of that race a few questions of their own choosing. When you get responses (or by Friday, October 31st even if not all…

  • Short Term Uncertainty

    I will be spending most of next week at a conference at Disney World so I don’t know how much I’ll be posting (little if any, I suspect). Besides that, I will be trying to take some concrete action to shape the group I talked about to encourage more widespread participation in civil political dialog.…

  • Reason To Be Anti-Incumbent

    I found this little exchange to be insightful from Congressman Bishop: . . . the two 1st District candidates snapped at each other, with Bowen accusing Bishop of taking $26,000 in the past four months from the radioactive-waste-storage company. "I did not take $26,000, I took $28,000," Bishop fired back. "And that’s not company money,…

  • Real Capitalists

    My reaction to Obi wan’s claim that "pro-capitalist conservatives have pushed for governmental intervention into our capital markets" was that nobody who supported the bailout has any claim to being a capitalist. I find that my position is much more clearly stated by Judy Shelton in the Wall Street Journal: Honest capitalism requires the following:…

  • A Budgetary Hat-Trick

    Jason shared a link to Budget Hero and I had to go take a look. If the game is to be believed, all is not yet lost in the quest to get a balanced budget without abandoning all vestiges of the social safety net that we have been spinning for the last 80 years. I…

  • Financial Foundations Exposed

    News reports related to the fluxuations of the stock market are not surprising or inconsistent, but when I stop to consider what they say I find that they are either disturbing or based on faulty assumptions. This holds true whether we are talking about reports of falling or rising stocks and the report on today’s…

  • Like Sheep . . .

    I have been noticing the various political yard signs popping up as we approach the general election and based on what I have seen I am beginning to think that in Utah, the most politically active non-candidates are almost universally leaning Democratic. Considering that Utah is still expected to heavily favor the Republican tickets at…

  • Rejecting Amendment E

    While amendment D looks to close a loophole in the Constitution, Constitutional Amendment E appears to be opening a loophole. I admit that there is potential to increase the funds available for public education if we allow some of those funds to be invested in private company stocks or bonds. The problem is that this…

  • Supporting Amendment D

    With the insertion of only 12 words Constitutional Amendment D would close a technicality which could be used by some enterprising politicians to wreak havoc on the necessary and often too-political process of redistricting. Now is a good time to do it too because, while redistricting is usually little more than adjusting existing district boundaries,…

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